Social workers who utilize the solution-focused model are mindful of how their conversations with their clients, families, groups or even community members facilitate their thinking about solutions. The client is always the expert, and therefore, social workers ask questions to explore how the client perceives the problem and situation.
Respond to two colleagues:
Identify a barrier that might make it difficult to implement the solution-focused model with the client described.
Discuss how a social worker could help a client re-focus on the present rather than on their past.
Colleague 1
Briefly identify and describe the problem as perceived by the client, family, or group that you dealt with in your past fieldwork or professional experience.
One client I worked with recently lost her employment due to being late on numerous occasions due to not having reliable transportation. Additionally, the apartment she anticipated was for sure will give to her did not due to her credit score being scaled as poor. Unfortunately, the client experience two extreme losses that affected her psychologically and emotionally, almost breaking her sobriety.
Coping Question
Intern: Hello, I know you have experienced detrimental losses in the same week, and your sobriety has grown substantially; how do you think you can move forward in a positive direction?
Client: I am very emotional right now; the only thing that would make me feel better is to have a drink.
Scaling Question:
Intern: To better understand how you feel toward the future, please rate how you feel about becoming sober again. 1-10, 1 meaning you can not move forward without a drink, to 10 meaning you do not need to drink to recover from these losses.
Client: As of right now, I am at a 5. I want to drink to cope with my problems; however, being sober is essential. I just want to find a way to relieve some stress without resorting to my past ways.
Explain how asking these two questions would help the client in coming up with the solution.
These important solution-focused questions would give me an understanding of the client’s current mental state and how she can cope with her problems without resorting to substance use. It is essential to analyze her mental stability to determine whether more interventions are suitable. The coping question is to geared focus on the resiliency of the client, as opposed to focusing solely on the problem. Solution-focused therapy focuses on what clients can do versus what clients cannot do. Instead of discussing or exploring clients problems or deficiencies, the focus is on the successes of clients in dealing with their problems, and how to notice and use them more often (Turner, 2017). As for the scaling Question, I want to learn how she is feeling about her present situation compared to her past crisis to gain an understanding of methods that helped her in the past with her sobriety. This question would allow the client to assess the current situation in collaboration with her sobriety.
Reference
Turner, F. J. (Ed.). (2017). Social work treatment: Interlocking theoretical approaches (6th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Colleague 2
In 12 sentences, briefly identify and describe the problem as perceived by the client, family, or group that you dealt with in your past fieldwork or professional experience.
A twenty-five-year-old female had a physically and emotionally abusive father who was an alcoholic. She suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has a difficult time trusting others.
Identify two different types of questions.
Scaling Question: Here is a mental health pain scale. There are several faces on this scale. Can you please point to the face you are currently feeling. Next point to the face that represents you when you interact with your father today. Explain the thoughts that occur.
Coping Question: I have noticed that you picked two different answers for the questions. What do you believe are some good techniques to use in order to feel less angry when around your father?
Explain how asking these two questions would help the client in coming up with the solution.
These two questions can help my client search for her triggers when interacting with her father. When she feels angry with her father, we will be able to take steps to help her find out what triggered her in the interaction. When we figure that out, we will be able to find the best fitting coping skill to use. This coping skill would hopefully begin to help her heal from past traumas. By continually prompting coping questions this could help the client reframe her thinking of being helpless. This would potentially empower her to take back control of her emotions (Turner 2017).
Reference:
Turner, F. J. (2011). Social Work Treatment: Interlocking Theoretical Approaches. Oxford University Press.
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social mobility
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Discussion about Social Mobility
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Please read ”
The American Dream Abides
Download The American Dream Abides,” which provides an example of an optimistic view on social mobility, a conversation that you may want to address in your own Exploratory Essay.
After you have read this article…
Provide a position, angle, or perspective that you have on this article and the author’s optimistic view of social mobility.
Provide one concrete example that supports or that counters this author’s position (you can take this example from your own personal experience or from current events and your own reading).
Respond to at least one of your classmates’ posts. Contribute something that will be useful for your classmates when they consider their own issues. (If you post early, you may need to come back a few hours later to see what your classmates have posted.)
Remember, you’re not
arguingwith each other in this discussion board; instead, you’re providing multiple perspectives in order to provide a fuller understanding of a complicated issue.
Here is the online link to the article:
The American Dream Abides 3/15/2020 American Dream: Social Mobility & Opportunity Are Alive & Well | National Review
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I
(Photo: Mylightscapes/Dreamstime)
Social mobility is still going strong in the Land of Opportunity.
s the American dream on life support? Thats the perennial claim of
declinists, who are convinced that the American spirit of opportunity is at
deaths door. That claim was recently bolstered by research from a team of
top economists, who found that half of todays 30-year-olds are worse off than
their parents were at the same age. A closer look at that study, however, reveals
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
The American Dream Abides
LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE
By May 15, 2017 8:00 AMSCOTT WINSHIP
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that opportunity is alive and well. That does not mean we should be complacent
about removing barriers to success for those born disadvantaged, but neither
should we worry that the nations best days are behind us.
For a long time, some declinists reluctantly acknowledged that Americans enjoy
much higher living standards than those of previous generations. But, they
argued, its harder to rise from rags to riches than it used to be. That claim ran
against 20 years of academic research on relative economic mobility moving
from, say, the bottom fifth to the middle fifth of family income between
childhood and adulthood. Those studies consistently found that any changes in
how often such transitions happen have been so small as to be difficult to detect
reliably.
That academic consensus was ratified two years ago by Stanford University
economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues, who used tax records to show that
relative mobility has been flat since the early 1970s. But their latest paper gives
the declinists an out. The Fading American Dream finds that absolute
mobility exceeding the income of ones parents has declined dramatically
over the past 45 years. In 2014, 30-year-olds had only a 5050 chance of beating
their parents, whereas nearly all 30-year-olds did in 1970.
Are the declinists finally finally! right that todays children will be the first
generation to do worse than their parents? No.
For starters, absolute mobility is higher than the Chetty paper suggests. Because
of delayed marriage, rising divorce, delayed childbearing, and reduced fertility,
families are smaller than they used to be. That means that a given level of
income needs to feed fewer mouths than it did in the past, so adults today can be
better off than their parents even when their income is lower. When Chetty and
his colleagues adjusted incomes for family size, 60 percent of todays 30-year-
olds were better off than their parents at the same age.
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In a recent paper for the Archbridge Institute a new Washington, D.C., think
tank focused on expanding opportunity I summarize the evidence on
economic mobility in America. Using a different data source than the Chetty
team, I find that 64 percent of 30-year-olds in 2010, 2011, and 2012 had higher
size-adjusted incomes than their parents at the same age very close to the
average rate of 62 percent found by Chetty during those years.
I then make two additional improvements to the absolute mobility measure. I
adjust incomes for the rise in the cost of living, using the superior price index
preferred by the Federal Reserve Board whose mandate is to keep inflation
under control and the Congressional Budget Office. (The price index used by
the Chetty team is known to overstate inflation.) That raises the absolute
mobility rate to 67 percent. Adding income from federal cash transfers both
social-insurance programs, such as unemployment compensation, and safety-
net benefits, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families raises the rate
to 68 percent.
It seems likely that when all is said and done, 70 percent or more of todays
30-year-olds are better off than their parents were at the same age.
Better data would show even more adults exceeding their parents income.
Neither my estimates nor Chettys count employer benefits, such as health
insurance or retirement contributions, as income, nor do they count federal non-
cash benefits, such as housing assistance or food stamps. These employer and
federal benefits have increased over time relative to cash income. The income
estimates do not look at disposable income after taxes either. Tax rates have
declined over time, and refundable tax credits to low-income families have
increased.
Furthermore, research suggests that even the price index I use overstates
inflation, thereby understating the rise in income over time. Finally, these
estimates miss adults whose parents immigrated to the United States after age
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30 or who are themselves immigrants. It seems likely that when all is said and
done, 70 percent or more of todays 30-year-olds are better off than their
parents were at the same age.
That is still lower than in 1970. But 30-year-olds in 1970 were born towards the
end of the Great Depression. Exceeding the income of their parents was
relatively easy compared with today. Few of todays 30-year-olds would trade
the higher absolute mobility their 1970 counterparts enjoyed for contemporary
living standards.
My research shows that todays 30-year-olds typically are richer than their
parents by more than 25 percent. That translates into over $10,000 more than
their parents. And as noted, these are conservative estimates of absolute
mobility.
Rich children are less likely than poor children to exceed their parents incomes,
because a rich child can be affluent as an adult and still be poorer than his
parents, while a poor child can be poor as an adult and still be richer than his
parents. We care more about the poor adults poverty than we do about the rich
adults lack of absolute mobility.
The same should be true in assessing the lower absolute mobility in a richer
America. The Chinese today are likely experiencing sky-high absolute mobility
rates. Should we wish that we were in China rather than in the nation that
remains the land of opportunity? We should not.
The American dream even in an affluent United States is alive and well.
Increasing absolute mobility will require us to boost economic growth through
lower corporate income taxes, deregulation, deficit reduction, higher-skilled
immigration, and revived entrepreneurship. The mistaken belief that living
standards are falling will lead us to embrace counterproductive policies that will
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perversely reduce absolute mobility rates. And that would actually produce the
fading American dream that the declinists wrongly proclaim today.
SCOTT WINSHIP directs the Social Capital Project for Senator Mike Lee in the Joint
Economic Committee. His writings reect his own views, not those of Senator Lee or
the JEC.
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